Ever wondered what the daily routine of a trader looks like? You’ve always thought of it as an impossible routine or a stressful one, right? Well, on the contrary, it is one of the most interesting and calm routines you can ever experience.
My name is George, and I am a Financial Markets Analyst at CFI and also a part-time trader. The routine below reflects my approach to preparing for the trading day aside from my role at CFI.
Before getting into the routine you should know that without consistency and discipline it is really hard to maintain such a routine in an efficient and successful manner. Also, note that you definitely need an emergency fund for at least 6 months to cover any unaccounted issues. You also need a reasonable capital to invest in, on average it shouldn’t be less than USD 50,000 to become a full-time trader, However, this is a topic for another day.
First of all, you need to divide your day into different sections and the sections vary depending on the trading session you trade mainly. For the purpose of simplifying the process, we will take a general day.
Fresh start your day at 6: 30 AM with grinding your whole coffee beans, boiling the water, and enjoying your beautiful drink. At 7:00 AM you start your high-intensity interval training followed by a calming 15-minute meditation session and then hit the showers.
At 8:00 AM you have your breakfast while setting your daily goals and tasks. At 9:30 you prepare your watchlist for the day, go through it thoroughly, and decide which instruments you will be trading depending on your strategy.
At 10:00 AM the action starts, whereby your weapons are ready, and you are fully alarmed on the market. You have your lunch between 13:00 and 15:00, then the hunt continues till approximately 17:00, whereby it is preferable to have all your positions closed by then if possible.
After that, you can do a quick 30-45 minutes workout if you are a fitness fanatic like myself, and then you have all the night for your social life.
Before sleeping you can squeeze in a 20-30-minute reading session, for example, I am currently reading “Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman”
On the weekends you go over your lost trades, while also backtesting new strategies and reading more books.
This is basically an example of how the day trader lives his day. He is obviously not trading on his mobile phone sitting in his Nissan GT-R Nismo, nor bombarded by 50 screens for 20 hours a day.
Remember, Discipline and consistency are key elements to success.
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The content published above has been prepared by CFI for informational purposes only and should not be considered as investment advice. Any view expressed does not constitute a personal recommendation or solicitation to buy or sell. The information provided does not have regard to the specific investment objectives, financial situation, and needs of any specific person who may receive it, and is not held out as independent investment research and may have been acted upon by persons connected with CFI. Market data is derived from independent sources believed to be reliable, however, CFI makes no guarantee of its accuracy or completeness, and accepts no responsibility for any consequence of its use by recipients.